Khurbyish Lesson #4 -- Family and relationship terms

Here's some words I came up with a couple years ago (though a few of them -- like the words for father, mother, and child -- are a whole lot older, and a couple are newer, too.)  This time around it's another basic set that lends itself to the "chart" format -- a family tree!

And yeah, it's a bit big, so it was shrunk down a bit by this site... you may want to click it to get a better look.

Anyway... most of this should be fairly self-explanatory due to the "family tree" format which should look pretty familiar, but in case it's not, I'll go over the words introduced here.  Terms in red are female-specific, while terms in blue are male-specific; most of the Khurbyish family terms (shown in white) are gender-neutral.

YIYAKU: Family.  This word refers to an entire family; adding the plural N to make "yiyakun" would mean you're talking about more than one family, useful in cases of feuds and marriages and that sort of thing.  Using the adjective-form R and possessive-form Z, you can pretty much replicate any use of the word "family" in English with this one.

HAMYALU: Grandmother.

HAMYIKI: Grandfather.

YIKI: Father.

YALU: Mother.

YIKIZTISO: Aunt or uncle on the father's side.  Literally translates to "father's brother" or "father's sister."  As with most Khurbyish words, there are no gender-specific variations; paternal aunts and uncles alike would both be referred to as "yikiztiso."

YALUZTISO: Aunt or uncle on the mother's side.  Literally translates to "mother's brother" or "mother's sister."

EPA: Cousin.

KU: Child.  Khurbyish does not have specific words for "daughter" or "son," or at least not any that are in common usage; most of the time, only this general term for kids of all sorts is used.

TISO: Brother or sister.  As with most of these words, it's not specific as to the gender of the relative in question.

CHOKI: Niece or nephew.

KUZKU: Grandchild.  Literally translates to "child's child."

As with the other posts in this series, I will most likely come back and add even more to this at a later date.  Specifically, I'll most likely be adding terms for other relationships beyond family -- for example, how to say "friend" in Khurbyish, or how to describe a caretaker who isn't actually your parent.

Khurbyish Lesson #3 -- Anatomy

And here's my third post about the Khurbyish language -- last time I covered some basic color-related words (and a few a little less basic), and now it's time for something completely different...

...with that "something" being some of the basic words for body parts.  Unlike the color words, these may not be immediately obvious even with lines pointing to the corresponding parts on this drawing of a Burijeoo disguised in human form, so I'll go over each one in a little more detail.

PLUO: The Khurbyish word for "head" or "face."  This double meaning is probably due to the abundance of round-bodied species (such as K'hyurbhis and Blurbys) on the planet Nummorro, who don't really have a distinct "head" region on their bodies.
This word is also an example of a situation where the combination of "OO" and another vowel doesn't change to the second vowel with a W sound before it -- "plwo" would be an unpronounceable mess (either that, or sound exactly like "pluo" if you did mangle a pronunciation out of it that made sense), after all!  This is generally how things work with "consonant+OO+vowel" combinations; the W sound from "OO" and another vowel combining only forms when "OO" is the first sound in a word, or if it's preceded by another vowel or the dash that's sometimes used to separate a word into two.

JE: Hair.  Can refer to hair on any part of the body, combining with other body-part words as if making a possessive form (like "head's hair," "arm's hair," and so on) if you want to be really specific.  For example, "pluozje" would mean "head hair" specifically.

DIU:  Eye.

DOIN:  Ear.

YED:  Neck.  This is a word that doesn't get a lot of use among the majority of Nummorro's inhabitants, as Numnums, K'hyurbhis, and Blurbys are all essentially neckless.  Presumably the word developed in order to describe the neck region on the bodies of other species.

ZUR:  Nose.  Can refer to either the external nose structure (on those species that have them) or just the nostrils.

WAPI:  Mouth.

ARR:  Hand or fist.

TAN:  Arm or leg.  Essentially, "tan" means "limb" in general, rather than being specific to what we humans would call "arms" or "legs."  As such, I've labeled both an arm and a leg with "tan" on the picture above.  The only way to refer to an arm (as in, a limb used primarily for grasping) specifically would be to combine the words for "hand" and "limb" -- making "arrtan."  Making a leg-specific word works the same way, combining the words for "foot" and "limb" to make "bolotan."

DEN:  Finger.  Thumbs are not distinguished from the other fingers in Khurbyish.  Toes are also not counted as something separate from fingers, though if you wanted to refer specifically to a toe rather than a finger, you could combine the words for "foot" and "finger" (as a possessive form, just like when referring to hair on specific parts of the body) to make "bolozden."  Along the same lines, you could specify "arrzden" to mean the fingers on someone's hand specifically.

PUKU:  Claw.

TAND:  Body.  Can also be used to refer to the torso specifically, in the case of creatures with more distinct body segments than those of Nummorro's species (such as humans, or anything else with a bipedal/humanoid body shape.)

BOLO:  Foot.

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Of course, most humanoid creatures lack certain body parts that are commonly found on some of Nummorro's other residents.  Here's some words for body parts found on Numnums and K'hyurbhis that weren't present on the diagram above:

TEJE: Feathers.  Literally translates to "bird hair," with "te" being a word used to refer to birdlike creatures.

YUZ:  Tail.  Note that this is an older drawing of a Numnum (from around 2010), so the tail is not drawn quite as long here as it should be -- but it's still present enough for the purposes of this post.

ARKU: Spike or horn.  Generally used to refer to the spikes on the top of a K'hyurbhi's head, though some other species have short, sturdy spikes or horns which are described as "arku" as well.  Thorns on a plant are sometimes referred to as "arku," as are spikes built into suits of armor or buildings for defensive purposes.  Longer or more elaborate horns, and especially those which fall out and regrow on a regular basis like a deer's antlers, would not usually be described as "arku" in Khurbyish.

KHURB'YIWALEN: A term that refers to the natural tattoo-like markings on a K'hyurbhi's face, which are present shortly after hatching (fading in from a very pale color over their first few years of life.)  These markings are the best way to identify an individual K'hyurbhi on sight, as they are like human fingerprints in that no two individuals' markings are exactly alike.  Literally translates to "K'hyurbhi colors," albeit using the Ancient Khurbyish form "Khurb'yi" rather than the modern "K'hyurbhi" -- this is a rather old term, and has probably remained due to the fact that "K'hyurbhiwalen" would be even longer than this already abnormally long word.

As with the colors page (and probably others to come in the future), this page will be updated to include other terms not included on the current version -- probably with even more body part words not found on humanoid creatures, such as wings and tentacles!

Khurbyish Lesson #2 -- Colors

Now that you know how to read and write the Khurbyish alphabet and recognize some basic forms of words (like being able to point out when a word is plural), now it's time for some basic Khurbyish vocabulary.

...and I mean something really, really basic.  As in, the names of colors!

Above is the standard "color wheel" that you've probably seen half a billion times before... but this time, all of its labels have been written in Khurbyish.  I also added white, gray, and black at the bottom since those are just as basic and important to know as the primary/secondary colors shown in the wheel.

"Walen" at the top means colors -- and, as you could probably guess by the "en" ending, the singular word for "color" in Khurbyish is just "wal."  Pronounced... basically exactly like the English word "wall," actually.

The colors themselves should be pretty self-explanatory, and the pronunciation of the words should be pretty easy to understand if you refer back to the previous post on how each letter/symbol is pronounced.

And here's some more color-related words, this time some a bit less basic than the primary/secondary colors shown up above.  "Sazipu" refers to all sorts of blue-green colors, "rahtin" is used for various browns, and "sheh" to various shades of pink.  "Rei" refers to dark reds and maroon sorts of colors like the ones used for that circle and the letters within.  "Rahhi" refers to various tan, beige, etc. sorts of colors, as demonstrated by the colors used for its circle and lettering.  Between "rahtin," "sheh," and "rahhi" (and perhaps "yai" and "ii" from up above if you want to exaggerate a bit), it's possible to describe pretty much every natural human skin tone using Khurbyish words... though as of this Khurbyish lesson, it's not yet possible to get really specific by going into whether it's a dark or light shade of that particular color.  I suppose you could say "ii-rahtin" or "yai-sheh" but then you'd sound... well, about as silly as someone going around describing someone's skin as "whitepink" would in English.  You could use "shehr-yai," which would translate to "pinkish-white," which is closer... but still not quite the way you'd normally describe a very pale pinkish skin tone in Khurbyish.
(Oh, by the way, that means you guys reading this now know how to make a "vague adjective" out of an already-adjective word... just add the adjective-forming "R" or "EH - R" to the end of it.  A second one on top of the one that's already there, if necessary.  So "shehr" would mean "pinkish" rather than just pink... and you could also form a word that means something along the lines of "snowy-ish" or "a little snowy" by changing "narr" into "narrer," for example.)
There are specific Khurbyish words for "dark" and "light" that can be combined with the colors to describe a specific color in more detail, but they'll come up later when I cover some basic adjectives.  Or weather-related words.  Whichever comes up first. XD

Also shown above is "vu" (another example of how F makes a V sound when combined with certain vowels in Khurbyish) and "chai," which refer to gold and silver.  Not the metals, of course, but the colors that we humans often associate with those metals -- metallic yellowy colors are "vu" and metallic gray-blue-white sorts of colors are "chai."  The metals that we call "gold" and "silver" probably have Khurbyish names as well, but those names probably aren't just "vu" or "chai."

And finally, there's "awal," which can be translate a variety of different ways into English -- clear, transparent, colorless, that sort of thing.  If you wanted to describe the color of glass, water, a crystal, or something else that doesn't have an actual color to it, you would use this word.  Anything you can see through without the image on the other side changing color is "awal" in Khurbyish, whether the image on the other side turns out perfectly clear or kinda blurry.  Awal is basically just the word for "color" with "a" (note: this is pronounced "ah," not "ay" or any other way you might pronounce a letter A by itself in English) added onto the front of it -- and "a" in Khurbyish basically means "no."  It can be used on its own like the word "no," and it can also be used to modify another word, creating an opposite of that word -- so "awal" means "no color," if you want to translate it literally.

I may add even more color words to this post as I come up with them, so watch this space for future expansions.

Khurbyish Lesson #1 -- Letters, sounds, and some other basic stuff

As some of you may already know, "Khurbyish" (pronounced kurb-yish, only two syllables) is the name of the primary language of the planet Nummorro, spoken and written by the Numnums, K'hyurbhis, Blurbys, and the majority of other intelligent species who share the planet with them (though some of those other species do still speak their original languages as well.)

Modern-day Khurbyish is actually a combination of two older languages which are no longer in use -- the Nummian language spoken by Numnums in the distant past, and Ancient Khurbyish, which was the original language of the K'hyurbhis and was also spoken by some Blurbys.  Though some bits of Ancient Khurbyish (and words derived from that long-dead language) can still be found in the modern version, the Nummian language's largest surviving contribution seems to be its alphabet, which the current Khurbyish alphabet is closely based on... though some Numnum names and the names of places in Numnum-populated areas still include occasional elements of Nummian, often blended with modern Khurbyish (the most notable example being the continent of Ummiboro, which essentially means something along the lines of "Numnum Lands." The name is derived from one of several old Nummian words that referred to Numnums, combined with the standard Khurbyish word "boro" meaning place, town, land, etc.)

Since its development many, many thousands of years ago, the Khurbyish language has spread far from its planet of origin.  It has basically become a universal language among species capable of Num Warp travel throughout the entire First Nherbi, spoken on worlds as close as Nummorro's neighbors Brijetoo and Bifiboro and as far away as Kekyb and Zwoobah.  As a result of this widespread usage, various dialects of Khurbyish have sprung up, perhaps the most unusual being the "Brijuo-Khurbyish" used by the Burijeoo (which discards the standard Khurbyish alphabet, replacing it with that of the Brijuo language which Khurbyish replaced, and mixes fragments of Brijuo itself in with standard Khurbyish to create a new form of the language that some speakers of standard Khurbyish find difficult to understand at times.)  Khurbyish has even been adopted by the internherbi Council of Iklai based in the 40th Nherbi as a sort of "language of diplomacy," ensuring that its members (who come from a variety of alien species from all over) have a common language between them.

Vowels

Like many languages (but unlike English), pronunciation in Khurbyish follows very consistent rules; vowels in particular are always pronounced the same, regardless of what combination of letters they are surrounded by.

The following is a table of the vowel sounds present in Khurbyish and the symbols which represent them (as the image is pretty large, it's been shrunk down automatically by the site and may not be super readable; you may want to click on it to see the full-size version.)

The right column of vowels are pronounced exactly like their equivalents on the left column, but with a Y sound preceding them (for example, the letter matching the pronunciation "yay" sounds pretty much exactly like the English exclamation "yay!" does.)  The "consonant Y" sound does not have its own letter in Khurbyish, existing only in the form of these secondary vowels.

One exception to the usual rule of pronouncing Khurbyish vowels exists with "oo."  This sound can be combined with one of the other primary vowel sounds (those in the left column) in order to create a W sound -- for example, in the Khurbyish word "wa" (meaning sword or blade, and written as "OO - AH.")  A more complicated example is the name "Poowuku" (which would be spelled in Khurbyish as "P - OO - OO - OO - K - OO"), where the second and third instances of "oo" combine into "woo" instead of being pronounced separately; it's impossible to have "woo" followed by "oo" in standard Khurbyish, as a string of three "oo" will always have the second and third become "woo" while the first stays as "oo."  The only way to represent such a word in Khurbyish would be to separate it into two words by using a small dash between them (a symbol which is usually used to separate two parts of a place's name, or someone's first name from any surnames.)  To turn "Poowuku" into "Pwu'ooku," you would need to place this dash  between the second and third "oo."

Another quirk of Khurbyish is that in writing, certain vowels followed by R are sometimes dropped.  This is the case with combinations of "UH - R" and "IH - R," which are both pronounced approximately the same (like "er" in English) and are generally written as just an R by itself, especially when positioned in such a way that the pronunciation as "er" is clear.  For example, "Blurby" is written as "B - L - R - B - EE" in Khurbyish, as the only possible pronunciation of an R sandwiched between two other consonants would be "er."  "YUH - R" and "YIH - R" are also pronounced the same ("yer"), but in the case of those combinations the vowel stays in place, as otherwise there would be no indication that the Y sound is supposed to precede the "er."

Consonants

As with the vowels, Khurbyish consonants have consistent pronunciations regardless of what other letters they are used in combination with (with one exception, which will be explained in more detail after the chart.)

Here's a table of the Khurbyish consonant sounds and the symbols used to represent them.

The pronunciations of most of these should be self-explanatory.  Khurbyish G is a "hard G" as in "guy" or "gross," though you probably could have guessed that considering that the J sound already has its own letter.  "ZH" is a bit of an unusual one, and its pronunciation is somewhat harder to explain than the others.  The closest equivalent I can find in a common English word is in "vision," where the "si" combination makes a very different sound from a standard English S but not quite a standard English Z, either.

The lone exception to the "every consonant in Khurbyish has one pronunciation" rule mentioned above is F, which is sometimes pronounced as a V sound instead.  Though some obscure Khurbyish dialects replace many F sounds with V sounds (and still others never use V, pronouncing F as F no matter what other sounds it is combined with), standard Khurbyish pronunciation uses the V sound only in the case of "F - EH," "F - AY," and "F - OO" combinations.  A common example of this change in pronunciation can be found in "veryeh" (F - EH - R - YEH), the Khurbyish word for bread.

Pluralizing, possessives, and adjectives

Making Khurbyish plurals is pretty easy when compared to a language like English which is riddled with a chaotic jumble of inconsistent plural forms (due primarily to borrowing from so many other languages.)  To make a word plural, you simply add "N" (if it ends in a vowel) or "EH - N" (if it ends in a consonant) to the end of that word.  For example, the Khurbyish plural of Blurby would be "Blurbyn" (B - L - R - B - EE - N), and the plural of Numnum would be "Numnumen" (N - UH - M - N - UH - M - EH - N.)

Creating possessive forms of a word or name works in a similar way.  To create a possessive form of a word that ends in a vowel or most consonants, you add Z to the end.  For example, the Khurbyish word for a paternal aunt or uncle is "yikiztiso" (YIH - K - EE - Z - T - EE - S - OH), literally meaning "father's brother or sister."  Words ending in Z, S, J, CH, SH, or ZH are a bit different, and to make a possessive form of them you add "EH - Z" to the end, similarly to how plurals of words ending in a consonant work.

A third way to make new words by adding a single letter or sound is to "adjective-ize" a word.  To do so, simply add "R" to the end of the word.  Though some Khurbyish adjectives exist as independent words from nouns with a similar meaning, many of them are created in this way -- examples include words like "narr" (snowy, derived from "na" meaning snow), "kukar" (insectoid or "buggy," derived from "kuka" which is a term for hard-shelled invertebrates), and even the name "Nummer" (which literally translates to "Numnum-like," albeit using the shortened "Num" rather than the full "Numnum.")

Wings of the Barfoo

Well, that was a bit unexpected.  I got a random idea while walking around town earlier tonight, and then after I got home and had a beer I figured "hey, maybe I should actually write that random idea."  So here it is, a brief little thing I wrote that basically acts as an origin story for one of the Guardians of the Barfoo who previously had no backstory whatsoever...

===================================================================

Wings of the Barfoo

Dark clouds hung over the ocean, the last red-orange glimmers of a sunset just barely managing to break through.  On an old wooden dock, a heavily-tattooed man sat down and breathed deeply, wiping the sweat off his brow with the only hand he had left – going by the lightly blood-soaked bandages covering his shoulder, it seemed that the other one had recently been removed along with his entire left arm.

                “Looks like it’s over,” he muttered, breathing a sigh of relief as the rough seas around him gradually began to calm once again.  “That was a close one…”

                An older woman clad in purple walked across the dock and stood next to him, tapping his wounded shoulder with the scraggly-looking old broom she was carrying.  A dim glow surrounded the bandages for just a moment, and then they vanished and were immediately replaced with fresh ones.

                “Wasn’t expecting the big fish,” the injured man grunted.  “Never seen one like that before.  Aren’t supposed to be fish that big around here.”

                “Indeed,” the old woman spoke, gazing out across the ocean.  “Dragged here from another world along with the storm that fool summoned, I’d imagine.  If I hadn’t been able to disrupt the spell when I did, he could’ve ended up dumping a whole other ocean onto us here…”

                “Scary stuff.  Ain’t it supposed to be a real pain to open a portal like that with magic normally?  But with the power of just one Barfoo Point...”

                The old woman nodded, causing her oddly-pointed hat to dangle precariously for a moment.

                “Now imagine if he’d been able to get his hands on the complete Uggy Barfoo.  The lunatic could’ve drowned the Earth under some other world’s ocean in a matter of minutes.  Well, I suppose you’d be fine, but not all of our powers lend themselves to those sorts of conditions.”

                He chuckled for a moment, but flinched slightly as a sharp pain in his side made him realize that he must have bruised a rib in the battle.  A moment later, he turned slightly, facial features hardening once again.

                “Do you think you can heal her?”, he said, pointing back over his shoulder toward a young girl lying face-down on the dock nearby.

She was utterly drenched, her soggy clothes clinging to her body and a mop of pale blue hair drooping down to cover her face.  Her hair wasn’t the only thing about her that was blue – her skin had taken on an unhealthy purplish-blue tone as well.  She had been under far too long.

“We both know that’s beyond my power,” she said, walking over and tapping the girl lightly with her broom, to no apparent effect.  “Even if I managed to revive her, she’d never be quite right again after what she went through… she’d probably wake up in such bad shape that she’d rather have just gone ahead and passed on.  There’s nothing I can do here.”

He stood up abruptly, ignoring the pain in his side.  She turned for a moment and glanced at him through her dark glasses, tilting her head slightly to look at the drowned girl lying nearby for a moment before shifting her gaze to the ocean and then back to him again.

“However… I believe an infusion of Barfoo Power would do the job quite nicely.”

The tattooed man’s eyes widened and he nearly staggered over backward from shock.

“Make her a Guardian of the Barfoo!? No, that’s… J’daahi Bunprego would never allow it!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said, smiling slightly.

“We know nothing about her,” he said.  “Bunprego has no reason to trust her with that kind of power.  He wouldn’t allow it.”

Once again, the old witch smiled.

“You may have noticed that J’daahi Bunprego is not here.  And in addition…”

She walked over to the drowned girl, crouching down and lightly touching the palm of one of her wrinkled old hands against her forehead for just a moment.

“…it appears that she didn’t end up this way by accident,” she continued.  “Oh no, she jumped into the stormy sea entirely on purpose – she was trying to save lives, you see.”

She stood up and tapped the same hand on the injured man’s forehead, and a stunned look came over him as flashes of another person’s memory – the girl’s memory – ran through his mind for several seconds.  She had singlehandedly dragged half a dozen of those who had been caught in the wave which had overtaken the beach to safety, and had only been pulled under in an attempt to go back for another who she hadn’t seen bobbing above the water’s surface before then.  No, it was two others—a man and a woman, attempting to keep each other afloat but being battered by the unnaturally-fierce wind and waves called down from the ocean of some unknown world.

“And it would hardly be the first time that an old Guardian has passed their position down to a new generation when they felt they were no longer  able-bodied enough to continue… and without consulting Bunprego beforehand,” she said, staring directly at him, her smile fading.  “You, of all people, should be fully aware of that.”

He sighed, hanging his head for a moment, and then walked over to the girl’s limp form and sat cross-legged beside her.  He held out his one remaining hand and placed it on her sea-soaked head, glancing back to the older Guardian before closing his eyes in concentration.  The witch nodded in approval, then just stood back and watched as a brilliant golden aura began to surround the two – surging around the one-armed man at first, and gradually draining away until it had surrounded the girl’s body instead.  As the last of the Barfoo Power’s light faded from the former Guardian’s body, it condensed itself around the newcomer, surrounding her like a protective cocoon for several seconds before vanishing within her.  A dim glow remained for several minutes afterward, and gradually her skin returned to its natural coppery tone and her hair and clothes dried at an accelerated rate, as if they had just spent an hour in the sun.  Before long, she looked to be in perfect health.

The one-armed man stood and slowly, staggeringly, walked across the dock to retrieve something he had left lying several yards away – a sword, its blue-gray blade marked with a pattern that resembled fishbones.  It was still marred with a splash of blood from the monstrous alien fish he had been forced to fight off earlier, but as he sat it down and placed the still-unconscious girl’s hand on its hilt the glow that surrounded her spread to the weapon, removing even the slightest trace of blood or damage until it appeared brand new.

“Would’ve liked to pass it on to my son,” he said, coughing slightly and clutching his side with the only hand he had left.  “But… that was a bit selfish of me, eh?”

“Perhaps a bit,” the witch mumbled.  “However, I think you will find that your choice of a successor may end up being part of the family after all...”

He blinked a bit, not immediately comprehending what had been said.

“The girl no longer has one of her own, you see,” the witch explained.  “The people she went back to save at the end, who she was unable to reach… they were her parents.”

With that, she mounted her broom and began to hover several feet off of the dock.  She sniffed the air for a moment, as if testing to see if it had begun to smell like Earth’s familiar ocean once again rather than the fragment of another that had been transplanted there earlier that day, and then took off flying across the sea so quickly that it seemed a miracle that her hat didn’t go tumbling backward off of her head.  Within seconds, she had left the islands behind, leaving the former Barfoo Guardian and his young successor alone on the rickety old dock.

“It’s done, then,” he said, glancing down at the still-unconscious girl, whose hand appeared to have instinctively grasped the handle of the fish-sword rather tightly.  “Whoever you are… whoever you were before.  Now you’re part of somethin’ you probably never knew existed just a couple hours ago...”

He knelt to the ground again, placing his hand over her head just like before.  And, just as she was finally beginning to stir toward consciousness, he closed his eyes and spoke what would be the first words she would remember hearing after the storm had passed.

“May the wings of the Barfoo carry you through this new life…”